The Beacon
by thinkatory
Summary: "She freezes. The ship's systems have just picked them up. Then she remembers. It's not programming, it's instinct, she cuts Ariadne's signal off and works through the ship's protocols and it's muscle memory as she shuts off the life support and plugs herself in. "I'm coming for you, River Tam," Lisbeth says, and uploads." Crossover between Millennium Trilogy and Firefly.


Crossover between the Millennium Trilogy and Firefly. Femslash. Enjoy.

* * *

"Wasp," Mr. Universe says, his eyebrow raised in the most provocatively amused position she's ever seen it, "this is ambitious even for you."

Lisbeth smiles at him, or the closest thing she gets to a smile these days. "Are you saying I can't do it?"

"Not at all." He grins back at her. "Do you need a tune-up before you go?"

She touches the faint traces of wiring on the skin of the side of her face, and considers the room. She blinks, considers the screenshot in her mind's eye, she drums her fingers on the table and she mentally flicks from domain to domain on the 'net via Universe's great wi-fi, and then shakes her head. "You really shouldn't let me see everything." She gestures broadly, to his whole set-up, the information she'll have to either upload, delete, or risk being discovered if she's ever captured.

"Who says you're seeing everything?" He laughs at the skeptical look on her face. "Fine. Are you sure, though," he checks again. "Because it wouldn't be a problem."

Lisbeth points at her ear. "This? Is not your area."

"It's close enough. The human brain is practically a - "

"Please, shut up," she asks him, not unkindly. "I'm not a machine. You know that."

"No, no. Of course." Mr. Universe pauses, for effect. "But I love machines too."

She whacks him on the arm, playfully. "Fine," she says, relenting. "Run diagnostics if it'll make you feel better."

"I'll even throw in a few applications." He shifts over to her side of the table, and touches her face, curiosity of her bio-tech winning out over things like social niceties or physical space. "Don't think I can improve on their translator, though."

Lisbeth hesitates, and leans away from his touch. "Give me a once-over," she requests. "I - " She can't say it. Her mouth tightens into a firm line before she speaks. "It happened again." _I lost time._

Mr. Universe almost always has the look of focused, determined amusement on his face, with variations on the theme. This time his smile is a rictus of fear. "I got you," he says, and stands up. "Come on, Wasp."

Just barely, she smiles, and takes his hand when he offers it.

He tells her a stupid joke as he injects her, as if needles are the things she needs distraction from, or are the worst thing she has to fear. The sedative takes effect within an instant of her settling on his makeshift neural diagnostic table, and she breathes in, and her consciousness disperses.

* * *

There's the terrifying moment where Lisbeth realizes she wasn't because all at once she is again. She connects, uploads, and there's the moment of strangely ethereal bliss as she joins the 'net and it opens up to her like a flower in bloom. She makes a path, checks her signs, and pulls as much information as she can from Alliance servers, her hacktivist channels, all of it, to upload back into her head once she's awake.

 _Thank you, U_ , she thinks.

This feels more real than real life. It feels more real than being alive. Living is all pain and running and this is exhilarating in a completely different way, this is freedom, where life is living in chains.

For all they've done to her, they've given her this.

(Is it worth it?)

She knows she's on her way to awake again when there's the scent of bright yellow lemons and gritty cane sugar in her teeth - a memory. She tastes the lemonade, grips the glass cool with condensation, practically pants under the heat of the sun. Her kind weren't made for this colony, her mum always said. Then she opens her eyes and she whimpers because it hurts, oh, it hurts and the weight of each breath is terrible and she just wants to go back -

Mr. Universe strokes her forehead, then, and she shakes her head just slightly when a tear escapes the corner of her eye and streaks hot down her cheek. "Did you find anything?" she asks.

"No hardware. Software, now," he says, "that was a goldmine. Fascinating stuff, Wasp. Can I show you?"

She doesn't know if she can bear it just now. She doesn't answer. "What was it?"

"Protocols," Mr. Universe says. "Nasty stuff. Apparently you're a bounty hunter."

Lisbeth forces herself to sit up. "I'm _what_?" she demands of him.

"Well you're not anymore," Mr. Universe says. "Mostly." She glares at him. "What?"

"Show me," she orders him, and pushes herself to her feet, shaky but ready. "Show me what they did."

"Aye-aye, Wasp," he agrees, merrily, and helps her to a seat where he calls "the place where the truth happens."

* * *

She never could have seen it. They buried it so deep and keyed it so closely to her off-switch that every time she even grazed it she went haring off after the girl. There's video, there's audio, there's files and data and fragments and all of the augments they put into her, every piece of wetware and dryware, have been put to fine use.

She stares at the screen, where there's POV video of her hands, nails painted black and sharp, expertly torturing an Alliance officer with a sonic razor close to his ear, and her voice, crisp and reasonable in flawless Mandarin: "I will ask you one last time - Dr. Pleasance, of the Academy - where can I find her? Coordinates. Leads. Anything you can give me. Try to be useful."

There are things scarier than seeing this, knowing part of you is this. But there aren't many of them.

"Dr. Pleasance is one of your people," Lisbeth says, softly, as the man in the recording screams, again and again - the camera scans to her foot as she kicks half of his ear off of her foot - and then he finally starts sobbing out coordinates.

"We don't call her that but yeah," Mr. Universe admits. "Look, our hack last time worked. No feed, no info, no nothing, the Alliance hasn't got any of the information you've gathered. I stripped the protocols and the videos and audio are set to transcribe so you don't have to watch them, you can just read the info, see where they were pointing you and why."

She shakes her head at him. "What do you call her? I'll do the work myself."

Mr. Universe sighs. "Wasp - "

"Tell me."

"Argo, she's at Argo. The coordinates from your, uh, contact, they're good." He frowns at her, deeply troubled, but goes on. "She's Ariadne."

"How classical." She turns to face him directly. "What's the trigger?"

He pauses. "What?"

"What's the trigger?"

Another pause. "I don't know."

She rolls her eyes. "What's the trigger?" she repeats, with emphasis.

He throws his hands up, in clear distress. "I turned it off!"

"U, just tell me," she snipes.

"It's - it's a song. You can't always hear it - I mean the cameras - it's - it's complicated," Mr. Universe protests, at the expression she sends at him. "You hear it! That's the important thing. It's a - a signal. That only you - or maybe people like you - is there anyone else like you? Hard to say - can hear. And once you do, you're a bloodhound. You're on the prowl. You have a mission."

"You didn't turn it off," Lisbeth says. She feels hollow, in her stomach, in her heart. "There's no turning it off."

He can't exactly look at her. "I tried," he says. "I tried, I promise."

She stands. "I have to go."

"Stay in touch, black-and-yellow," Mr. Universe says. When she looks at him, he's smiling again, concerned, but he reaches to embrace her, and though she stands stiff between his arms, she presses her face into his shoulder and tries to imagine what it might feel like to be a real girl again.

"Later," Lisbeth says, upon withdrawing. Then she makes herself leave, climbs into the shuttle, and takes off before she can think twice about where she's headed.

* * *

Argo's a moon days away from the moon she left and it's a boring trip on her own, but she blasts her music and stays in her cockpit just in case. Two days in she wonders where the time went, and she remembers what Mr. Universe said about the trigger.

 _It's a song._ Did she lose time? She disconnects her neural cameras, focuses on the logs, then huffs in frustration and plugs herself into the ship's mainframe. It's a matter of an instant before she realizes that she's just paranoid, then she unplugs and checks the black for ships, and no one is there.

Fear is a horrible thing. It's the worst thing. She doesn't break down this time, and turns the volume up on the music to drive her demons away.

* * *

Ariadne is one of the councillors of Argo, those who turned on the Alliance and protested what the Academy chose to create with the minds of the newest generation of geniuses. Lisbeth doesn't remember a Dr. Pleasance, or an Ariadne, until she meets her.

"L. Salander," Ariadne says. She smiles, sadly, lines in her face softening. "I remember you."

"I remember you," Lisbeth says. She considers using her considerable skills and remarkable rage to wreak vengeance, but there are bigger priorities, worse people who deserve to feel the pain that's been inflicted on her for years now. "And you've changed sides. You're Ariadne now."

"Yes," Ariadne says, and brushes wispy gray hair from her face. "I've left that life behind. But we both know this... thing is more complex than white hat or black hat."

"Well." She shrugs. "I don't see it that way."

Ariadne laughs, just slightly, and smirks when she raises an eyebrow. "Come on," she says to Lisbeth. "Philosophical debate can wait. There's food."

* * *

Argo's safe. Or something. Argo is where Lisbeth allows herself to breathe, because Ariadne knows. She wound the tech through Lisbeth's body and brain, and now she's slowly unwinding it, or unwinding it enough that she might not kill everyone and everything on this moon just to get to the girl.

As she lays in the recovery room, after the third surgery, Ariadne sits with her, though a good distance away. Silence is fine, more than fine, until Lisbeth feels all right to speak, and listen, and not as though she's a hair-trigger away from becoming someone else. "Who is River Tam?" she asks.

"She was like you," Ariadne says, softly. "She wasn't one of mine. But - she was remarkable."

She doesn't want to look at the data. She doesn't want to remember. There's the slightest possibility that she's misunderstood it all, or forgotten, or that U wiped it from her memory for her own sake. "Is she - " Her throat stops. It hurts to think about.

"No." Ariadne exhales, as though she'd been holding her breath. "She's alive. Very much so. She's the beacon, Wasp."

Lisbeth feels some tension leave her body. It's at this moment that she realizes how human she feels. She doesn't know whether it's a good thing.

"I want to find her," she says, and licks her lips. "For us. For Argo."

Ariadne smiles, like Lisbeth imagines her mother might have.

* * *

After the fourth surgery, Lisbeth flees Argo. The humanity she's craved for so long is a weakness. She knew this, before, but now that they've torn her apart and rebuilt her as she should have been, she feels like a child, useless, worse than useless. There's a beacon out there, a beacon they have to find. A beacon she was built to find, by all the wrong people, but does it really matter?

 _Incoming transmission_ , the screen in her cockpit says. She ignores it. Again: _Incoming transmission_. She ignores it, but then someone hacks her signal and she hurries to shut them out - then Ariadne is on her screen.

"Wasp," Ariadne is shouting. "Wasp, you have to listen to me."

"No," Lisbeth says, pointedly, "I'm not coming back."

"Wasp, listen to me! Please! There are reavers!"

She freezes. The ship's systems have just picked them up. Then she remembers. It's not programming, it's instinct, she cuts Ariadne's signal off and works through the ship's protocols and it's muscle memory as she shuts off the life support and plugs herself in.

"I'm coming for you, River Tam," Lisbeth says, and uploads.

Lisbeth is a dead girl. She knows she won't survive. But she scrambles to put it all together, on the 'net. With digital fingers she reaches out to guide the ship with expert Alliance pilot skills, she reaches out to broadcast the signal to U and everyone else, she pours her data into a packet so hard to crack that only an Academy brat could find it, see it, read it. She feels the ship take evasive manuevers, not physically, but mechanically; she feels herself inside the ship; she feels no fear, just numbers and logic and cold hard fact that this is the right thing to do. (And this is what it means to be a real girl, isn't it, isn't that how the story goes, by magic the child's toy will walk and talk, but by courage it becomes real?)

The last words in the packet are _I'm sorry, I thought I was going to_

* * *

Lisbeth wakes up. She wakes up, and no one is more surprised than she is.

She groans. She's on a Core planet, based on the room she's in. Is it a cell or a hospital room? Or a mechanic's bay? It's difficult to tell. She stumbles up, though her body is weary and aching and one of her wrists seems to be bound in a way that suggests it was broken. She pulls the wire from her ear and plugs in once more.

There's a signal. It's as clear as ice water on a summer day, as fresh as sunlight on her skin. It's the biggest sense of relief she can find. It says, _This is what they've done. They let all these people die and live in horror for love of power. They must be stopped. Help us._

She knows where she is.

When she unplugs from the hospital bay grid of Serenity, there's a girl across the room from her, at the door. There's a girl with long dark hair, a haunted face, and a gaze that cuts deep into Lisbeth's techno-riddled heart. "I remember you," she says.

"River," Lisbeth says, her voice soft, her face flushed.

"The Tin Man," River Tam says. "The Wicked Witch found you and took your heart away." Lisbeth feels herself quivering. "But you had it all along. Don't you know?"

Tears pinprick her eyes. "Is that how the story goes?"

River smiles. "Let me read it to you." She approaches Lisbeth, and holds out her hand. "Come with me, Wasp."

Lisbeth smiles, so wide it makes her face ache.

* * *

They are broken into too many pieces to find, maybe, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth trying. Inside Lisbeth is all data and encryption, and inside River is everyone else, churning away, and they have so much to learn from each other. River plucks memories and words from Lisbeth's mind, to prove she's both human and herself, and Lisbeth gently sews River back together at the seams with fact and logic. They're still running, but at least they aren't running from themselves.

(When River kisses her, there is nothing better. There is nothing more real than River, her lips, her mouth, the comforting weight of her body against hers, the gentle pressure of her knee between Lisbeth's legs. There's nothing better than being loved for what she is, all metal and flesh and genius mind and heart to spare.)

"I love you," Lisbeth whispers to her, her fingers twined in River's hair and lips against her neck.

"I know," River says, and holds her close.

The world has changed, both outside and inside of them. And there's no going back.


End file.
